Sacrifice (16 page)

She should kill it.

She didn’t know if she had it in her to slash its throat with her dagger or plunge it into its tiny chest—but surely she could set fire to the thing. She couldn’t be certain if it would work, if the monster could be killed, but it was obvious it was evil and could not be allowed to grow. Allowed to be let loose into their world. Zhen Ni shook violently.

But she couldn’t do anything without her husband finding out. If Master Bei knew that she knew, Zhen Ni was certain he would kill her. If she ran to her family, he would kill them too.

The baby had finished eating the eyeball and had two fingers shoved into its mouth, suckling them. It tilted its head, then began crawling toward her, babbling baby talk all the while. Zhen Ni thrust her dagger forward again, crying out. The thing stopped, then raised both chubby arms toward her, fingers opening and closing in supplication. As if it only wanted to be picked up and held. Only wanted to be cuddled.

Scrambling past the dead bodies, Zhen Ni ran back toward the tunnel entrance. She had wanted to know the secret that her husband kept, and now she did. And she could do nothing to help herself, to help protect her town from what was breeding deep beneath her beautiful new manor.

She raced up the tunnel, losing her breath, but not caring, desperate to be above ground, away from that perverted creature. Her mind ran as wildly as her feet did, but it spun in circles, unable to come up with any solution. When she reached the rope ladder, she collapsed against the hard stone wall, tears streaking down her face, her limbs weak with terror.

Zhen Ni had never felt so impotent or so utterly alone.

Kai Sen

Midday, and the sunlight overhead pierced through the branches and thick foliage of the trees in thin slivers from above. Kai Sen had escaped the confines of the monastery to be alone to think. But no matter how many ways he approached the problem of saving Skybright from Stone, he couldn’t conceive a solution. Kai Sen broke through the forest and walked along the stream. He always seemed to return to the place he first met Skybright without ever planning to, like a reflex. The water swept over the rocks, creating a soothing sound, unlike the noise that filled his mind. Stone had shown how powerful he was that day within the cavern, at hell’s breach into their world.

Kai Sen had pored over dozens of ancient texts from Abbot Wu’s personal library, hoping to find something that could be used against the immortal. But while there were thousands of pages devoted to banishing or destroying demons and monsters, not one word was said about tricking a god—much less defeating him. There was no chance he could take Skybright away unless Stone agreed to it. But could Stone be reasoned with? Did he feel any obligation to keep his word?

It had been two days since he had gone to Qing Chun and tracked down Skybright with Zhen Ni. Two long days as Kai Sen re-imagined what he had witnessed over and over in his mind. Zhen Ni had said that Skybright had changed, that she was demonic, and they weren’t capable of knowing what Skybright could do now. Would do. He saw again her powerful serpent’s body winding its way around her victim, the man’s choked cries of terror. Could she have turned into a murderer? Was he too blinded by love to see the truth?

But Kai Sen had always relied on his instincts—born with the gift of clairvoyance, as Abbot Wu called it. Gift or curse, he was able to see hungry ghosts trapped in this realm when no one else could. His gift was what had tied him irrevocably to Skybright, so he could sense her presence if she were near enough. That coupled with his love for her.

He knew he could trust Skybright in the same way that he was unable to trust Abbot Wu since that terrible day at hell’s breach. He didn’t like lying to the abbot, but he was good at it. He’d told half-truths and outright lies his entire life—pretending he didn’t see the spirits who wandered in this earthly realm. Grunting in frustration, he ran full speed toward the creek before taking a flying leap across the water to land on both feet with a satisfactory
thump
on the other side.

Pacing the water’s edge, he had a sudden urge to see Zhen Ni again. She was the only one he could talk to about this. Perhaps she could see a solution where he could not. Or talk some sense into him, although he could never imagine giving up on Skybright, no matter how dire the odds. Kai Sen knew Zhen Ni had just married and moved into the new Bei manor—an estate so magnificent even he had heard about it within the monastery. He uttered the incantation to create a portal into the Bei manor and drew his arm in an arc, but instead of the usual rent that would appear for him to step through, the tear opened, then snapped closed with a fizzling noise. Puzzled, he tried again, and a third time, with the same results.

He’d never had a portal snap shut on him like that before, and it felt as if his magic was being thwarted.

The familiar scent of sulfur, thicker than he’d ever smelled, lingered in the air from the failed portal. It had been that strong at the breach to the underworld. What could this mean? Was there some darker magic at work here—or was Kai Sen’s ability failing him? But his natural skill wielding the elements had never failed him before, not once he mastered a spell.

Tilting his head, he perceived the eerie silence that had fallen over the mountainside. Pinpricks danced across his scalp; Kai Sen realized the gong to announce the midday meal at the monastery had never sounded, when it was always rung throughout the day precisely on time.
Something was wrong at the monastery
. Not caring if any monks saw him appear from thin air, not caring if Abbot Wu discovered he had been practicing magic forbidden to him, Kai Sen worked to create another portal right into the heart of the monastery—the massive square where the monks converged each day. To his immense relief, it worked this time.

The portal opened for him, and Kai Sen stepped into chaos.

Cypress trees along the edges of the giant square were burning; dark plumes of smoke bellowed into the sky. Monks swarmed around Kai Sen, setting fire to the undead that lurched, thick as locusts. Corpses littered the stone floor, undead and brother monks alike, even as some of the dead monks began to rise unsteadily to their feet—reanimated after being tainted. His closest friend Han ran up to Kai Sen, muscled arms covered in gore and soot. He gripped a saber in his hand that matched the one Kai Sen held.

“What happened?” Kai Sen asked, decapitating two undead creatures that had jumped too close to them.

“They seemed to appear out of nowhere before our midday meal.” Han grunted as he lopped off the head of another undead corpse. “The monastery is overrun.”

“Any demons?”

“We’ve managed to kill five of medium size.”

The medium-sized demons towered over the tallest monks.

“But—” Han seemed to choke on his own breath. “Some of the demons are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”

And they had seen and fought all sorts of monstrosities from the underworld. His friend stabbed the air with his saber, ready to return to fighting. But Kai Sen knew him well enough and caught the fear that had flashed across his friend’s tanned face and the involuntary gritting of his teeth. Whatever Han had seen scared him.

“The one big one got away,” Han said. “We weren’t armed—”

“Where?”

“Toward the private library—”

“Abbot Wu,” Kai Sen said.

“No one’s seen him—”

Kai Sen ran toward the grand building that housed Abbot Wu’s quarters, vaulting over bodies as he did so.

“If the enemy ever broke into our monastery,” Abbot Wu had said to him once, “protect our library first. These texts are knowledge—containing history, wisdom, and power that is irreplaceable. They cannot be lost, Kai Sen.”

He burst through the paneled door of the abbot’s study in time to hear the demon’s roar, so loud it rattled within his ears. The long blackwood table where Abbot Wu studied had been thrown onto its side, and the two chairs in the room smashed to pieces against the far wall. Shelves had been knocked over, and ancient tomes littered the stone floor. The room stank of the demon’s thick, rancid musk and the abbot’s sour fear. Abbot Wu was pushed into a corner, holding his staff up as the giant vulture demon thrust its talons at him. The abbot struck out with his staff, glowing a fierce blue, and the vulture jerked its arm back but not before a talon punctured the abbot’s side. Abbot Wu crumpled against the wall, barely standing, breathing hard.

Kai Sen shouted a war cry, a guttural noise from deep within, and slashed his saber across the back of the demon’s knees. Dark brown feathers that covered the demon’s legs flew as Kai Sen struck again. The vulture demon squawked. It pivoted to face Kai Sen, then stabbed its sharp talons at him. Spreading its wings, the monster seemed to fill the entire chamber as it launched itself toward Kai Sen. He twisted and rolled out of the way before leaping to his feet and jumping to plunge his saber between the demon’s shoulder blades where its wings were rooted. He dangled off the ground because the vulture demon was nearly twice his height.

It writhed and shook, trying to dislodge Kai Sen from its back, but he shoved the saber in deeper. He muttered an incantation under his breath, drawing the strands of fire from the air, focusing its power into his blade. It began to glow, dimly at first, then in a blue so bright it hurt his eyes to look at it. The vulture demon’s flesh began to sizzle, the feathers of its wings curling as it burned. Acrid smoke filled Kai Sen’s senses, and his eyes watered.

The demon bucked now, shrieking an unearthly cry that shook the study’s walls. But Kai Sen hung on, pulling more from the fire element around him, feeling his chest tighten with its power, his breath catching as the thing pivoted and slammed Kai Sen into the wall, pinning him there.

Dark spots scattered across his vision, but Kai Sen shook his head and used the wall as leverage as he wrapped his legs around the demon’s thick torso and shoved the blade burning with hellfire in to its hilt. The demon shuddered, jerking so erratically Kai Sen almost lost grip of his saber, before it thumped to its knees, then collapsed facedown onto the stone floor. Its sharp beak cracked with an audible
snap
.

Kai Sen kneeled on the dead demon’s back, hands gripping his hilt so hard it didn’t feel as if he could loosen his fingers. Sweat slid from his brow, dripping like tears onto the vulture demon’s massive wings. It had been a difficult kill, but this demon had been no different than those he had fought during the breach in the underworld.

A whisper of fabric came from behind him.

He caught the sly shuffling of cloth shoes against stone between the abbot’s ragged breathing from the corner.

Kai Sen’s skin crawled; he jumped to his feet and spun toward the study’s door. A woman clothed in white glided toward him, but everything about her was
off
. She undulated, her long limbs moving in smooth and assured motions in one instant, then jerking into impossible angles the next, knees and elbows bending backward like a broken puppet. Black hair obscured her face, and as she writhed closer, a strange clacking noise filled the air.